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The first point is that the toughening in attitudes to homosexuality is part of a general revision of Church doctrine on sexuality. The second is that these changes concern Western Christendom, ie the Roman Church. The third, that they are contemporaneous with the rise of the Middle Ages.
Roughly sketched, the fall of the Roman Empire opened a period of barbarian invasions often called the Dark Ages, that came to an end in the C10. At that point the barbarian kingdoms are Christianised, but Rome's hierarchical hold over local Churches is tenuous. From the C10, there is the beginning of economic change (rise of towns and trade) which is concomitant with the rise of the monasteries. New monastery-building goes hand in hand with a spirit of reformation, the most important aspect of which is the Benedictine reform set off especially from Cluny (founded 910) in Burgundy. Monastic life becomes stricter and its spiritual aspirations higher. This "puritanical" movement sees, not just the monasteries but also the bishops and secular clergy, as corrupt and in need of profound change. It seeks independence from royal, feudal or episcopal control by calling for patronage on the bishop of Rome - in other words, the traditional head of Western Christendom, who finds in return a new means of asserting power over the crumbled remains of the empire.
So the monastic reformation leads, during the C11 and into the C12, to a Rome-led general reformation of the Church (celebrated from the C12 in Gothic architecture).
And so the Roman Church, from the C11 to C13, creates the new concept of Christian marriage, outside of which sex has no place, and within which sex is strictly regulated (no sex during the woman's "impurity", on Sundays, in other than the missionary position, etc). Le Goff continues:
There are fairly obvious subjacent questions here, to do with popular belief, with purity/impurity, with rising hysteria regarding the body and its functions, on which the Church built what is still recognisably its doctrine with regard to sex. They'll be for another time... When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
When looking backwards from today it is easy to make the mistake of seeing the church through the eyes of a centralised, homogeneous, monolithic and all powerful institution when the reality was very different - a lot of power struggles within and without the church around money, land, inheritance, and political power.
The insistence on celibacy was as much about ensuring that all property accrued to the Church rather than to the children and heirs of priests and Bishops - than it was about sexuality per se. I suspect homosexulaity may have been practiced very widely to get around rules re. mixing with the opposite sex and so too had to be condemned. This was a time of very great turmoil in society and anyone acting outside perceived norms would have been in great danger. It doesn't quite explain why same sex marriages were discontinued, but certainly a great wave of puritanism seems to have engulfed the Church, if not society as a whole. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
